WHAT does a well-known TV chef bring to a heavy metal album? Meaty hooks? Carnivorous vocals?
Bad puns aside, this is Seasons in Black’s first album in a dozen years. Fronted by Lucki Maurer, who is well-known in his homeland Germany as popular TV chef, Seasons in Black started life as a pure unadulterated black metal outfit in 1996.
Over the preceding years, the band has evolved its sound into something a lot more ambitious and grandeur in scope, incorporating elements of goth, hardcore and symphonic black metal. Suffice to say, this version of Seasons in Black is far removed from its original incarnation.
With years of collective studio and live experience to call upon, Season in Black seeks to take its sound to new heights. Antropocene is very much the work of a veteran band – highly polished and executed with a fine precision by very skilled hands.
Lest it be forgotten, Germany is one of the hotbeds of heavy metal and its many subgenres. Competition is fierce and intense with no place for bands that are not up to scratch. Just because German fans are diehards does not mean they are slouches when it comes to quality assurance.
Having graduated from the dank, underground clubs of their native Bavaria, this quintet has over the years played to steadily growing audiences to the point of becoming festival mainstays in their homeland.
Seasons in Black’s fully-realised vision reflect an outfit that has confidently evolved across decades and is pretty much unperturbed by accusations of selling out. Like Cradle of Filth, who also rose from black metal origins to bestride the metal universe, this German outfit is also highly slick and polished with the sound more akin to more symphonic-and melodic-death subgenres rather than its black metal roots.
Anthropocene is the work of a finely tuned machine. For those who like their metal presented by a well-drilled unit with a healthy respect for melody, this album is near perfection.
However, those who prefer their noise to be a bit more abrasive and have a bit of a raw, cutting edge, Antropocene may just be too polished a record.
Competent and shiny, this album is very obviously the work of metal veterans. Dark Throne and Autopsy aside, few bands can or are willing to plough on with a singularly underground vision as the years and decades go by. Some form of polish and slickness is bound to weave its way into proceedings.
Not for everyone but a very fine example of what well-produced metal can sound like when executed by musicians with decades of know how.
Antropocene was released on July 4 via the Apostasy Records lable and can be stremed on all major platforms.
